Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/27

Rh natives, and continued in a flourishing conditioti until it was destroyed by the Whitman massacre of November, 1847, which massacre all the advocates of the Whitman Legend represent as falling on a flourishing and successful mission, while Spalding and Gray (two of the chief witnesses on whom Dr. Mowry and all other advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon story rely) declared that it was instigated by the Hudson Bay Company, and the Catholics, (which charge was as atrocious and as inexcusable a slander as ever was uttered,) neither Dr. Mowry nor any other advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon story has ever quoted one sentence of any of the scores of pages of the contemporaneous correspondence and diaries of the mission, which establish beyond dispute that it was in a state of decadence really as early as 1839-40, and steadily suid rapidly went down from that time onward, so that if there had been no Whitman massacre the mission in all probability would soon have been abandoned, as the Methodist Mission to the Oregon. Indians had already been.

Want of space prevents further discussion of these points here, but in my forthcoming book I devote a chapter to "The Long Suppressed Evidence on the Decadence of the WhitmanSpalding-Eells- Walker Mission," and another to "The Long Suppressed Evidence on the True Causes of the Whitman Ma-ssacre," and the readers of them will find them quite as startling as the chapter on "The Long Suppressed Evidence as to the Origin and Purpose of Whitman's ride,"

Sixteen of Whitman's letters between Nov. 1, 1843, and Oct. 18, 1847, aggregating about 26,000 to 28,000 words, are in the archives of the American Board.

Although in several of these letters Whitman made very extravagant and wholly unwarranted claims of great services rendered to the National Government, it is a very significant fact that in none of them, nor in any of his letters to his friends, nor in any of Mrs. Whitman's to her friends, is there any claim that he ever had had any interview with President Tyler, or Secretary Webster, or that he had ever received any promise of any assistance from them, or from any officer of the National Government, or that he had communicated any information of any importance to the Government, or had published in newspapers or otherwise any such information, or held any meetings to promote migration to Oregon, or that he had had anything to do with originating or organizing the migration of 1843, but only, at first, in November, 1843, t^at he was "instrumental in leading the 1843 migration," and later that he "led" that migration, and though he claims, (what is manifestly incorrect,) that the migration of 1843 was a decisive factor in bringing about the treaty of 1846, he nowhere, save in his letter of April 1, 1847,—four and one-half years after he started on